Saturday, December 18, 2010

Change without Compromise: A Two Pronged Strategy Is Needed

I gave a talk last Monday to the Kingston Rhinebeck Tea Party about the pursuing a two-pronged partisan strategy. The GOP has not shrunk government in 30 years. George W. Bush increased it. He also increased tyrannical state power through the Patriot Act, which the Democrats have not repealed.

Early this year I had e-mailed the head of the Kingston Rhinebeck Tea Party, Thomas Santopietro, and suggested to him that the Tea Party would be coopted. In light of the vote on the corrupt tax bill for which key congressional Tea Party representatives voted yea, Tom asked me to speak to suggest to the group that a Third Party as well as a GOP strategy ought to be kept in the forefront of Tea Partiers minds. I spoke this past Monday night.

A GOP victory with George Bush, George Pataki or Rick Lazio is worse than a Democratic victory. When free-spending fools like Bush get power the Democrats can claim that he represents freedom. But tyranny is not freedom and Bush and Lazio do not represent freedom. If Tea Partiers are loyal to the GOP and support the likes of Lazio, as the GOP establishment did in New York, then the Tea Party will be just another anti-freedom movement. The only way that the Tea Party can remain a force for freedom is if it keeps an open mind to shelving the two-party system.

I have been following politics on and off for forty years and I still can't grasp why Americans favor a two-party system. It has resulted in their being taxed to fifty percent of their incomes to get a garbage government. Garbage at the federal level; garbage at the state level; and garbage at the local level. Despite the complete failure of the two party system Americans remain much more loyal to it than they do to liberty.

I hold those who favor the two-party system and so support the GOP even when the likes of Bush are elected as more responsible for America's decline than Democrats. Democrats are ignorant fools. Two-party-system Republicans are sophmoric, i.e., wise fools. They know enough to support freedom but they support candidates like Bush and Lazio who oppose freedom.

When I gave my talk at the Tea Party several people agreed with me and several people disagreed. One woman claimed that third parties would produce fringe cranks. She also falsely claimd that the Patriot Act was signed by Bill Clinton. Doctrinaire Republicans lie and spin just like doctrinaire Democrats. As well, the woman forgets that the Republican Party started as an alternative party to the Whig Party.

The two-party system has caused America's decline because both parties are responsive to interest groups. The special interests that are subsidized by the Fed, to include the banking system and Wall Street, the media, government, and much of big business, all contribute heavily to Republicans as well as Democrats. General Electric (note: I own 200 GE shares) owns NBC and MSNBC, which were among the biggest supporters of Obama. When Obama was elected the first thing he did was approve the Bush-Paulson bailout. Guess who benefited. GE Capital, of course.

To be committed to a two party system is to favor the status quo. On the other hand, the GOP is the more redeemable of the two parties. Hence, I am active in the GOP. The good news is that the omnibus spending bill has been defeated. The bad news is that the tax deal, supported by many key Tea Party Republican representatives, included a large quantity of corrupt government spending that approached the Democrats' corrupt stimulus bill.

Charles Krauthamer said it was horrible. Mitt Romney opposed it. Fiscal hawk legislators like Rep. Paul Ryan said it was the best deal they could get. And Coburn, who has railed against every unpaid for expenditure over the last year, kept largely quiet on the deal until the day of the vote when he offered an amendment to cut spending by $160 billion that was defeated, and then voted against the bill along with four other Republicans...Most telling, Tea Party groups founded by less experienced political operatives and based outside Washington – such as Tea Party Patriots and Tea Party Nation – opposed the deal vehemently. But hard line conservative groups in D.C., such as FreedomWorks and Americans for Tax Reform, backed it.

That illustrates why we need a third party. Compromise between two big government parties is not "moderate." The people in Washington and the state capitals are socialists, fascists and totalitarians. They are not moderates. The only way that change can occur is through a rethinking of the smug, insipid policies of the past 50 years. That will require change without compromise.

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Mitchell Langbert

About Me

I have researched and written about employee benefit issues and in my previous life was a corporate benefits administrator. I am currently associate professor of business at Brooklyn College. I hold a Ph.D. from the Columbia University Graduate School of Business, an MBA from UCLA and an AB from Sarah Lawrence College. I am working on a project involving public policy. I blog on academic and political topics.